It's a bold statement for a man to make when he's retiring after 14 years as the artistic director of the largest theatre in North America, but, on reflection, he deserves it.

Conventional wisdom in recent years has been to mock Monette for his easy populism, his crowd-pleasing musicals and his obsession with the bottom line, but after an exclusive interview in which he analyzed the complex arc of his career, it becomes easier to see why he made the decisions he did.

Fade In: Stratford, 1993. "The place was in deep trouble," recalls Monette. There had been an annual deficit for three straight years, one of them a whopping $1.3 million. And the shows weren't always noble artistic failures; in 1991, the Star's theatre critic Robert Crew pronounced some of the shows presented during David William's regime as "among theworst I've ever seen at the Festival."

Although Monette refuses to attribute the shortfall to William, his predecessor, ("It was the recession, the GST, the times; it wasn't David"), the elitist quality of William's programming had something to do with the fact that audiences were staying away in droves.

It's no wonder that Monette looked so attractive as the Sir Galahad who could save the festival. The actor born in Quebec in 1944 had joined the Stratford company in 1973 and zoomed to national prominence in 1980 when his ringing cry of "Bullshit!" interrupted the public meeting that was supposed to canonize British director John Dexter after the board had fired a four-person Canadian directorate.

Following that outburst, he stayed away from Stratford for nearly a decade, but started honing his directing skills. When he returned in 1988 with a 1950s staging of The Taming of the Shrew that sublimely blended Fellini and Shakespeare, some people thought that the festival had found the populist leader it had sought for so long.

A coureurs des bois As You Like It and a commedia dell'arte The Comedy of Errors convinced many people that Monette was the man the Stratford Festival needed.

The only person who wasn't convinced was Monette. After initially applying for the job, he sent a letter to the board on a Friday night, withdrawing his application.

The next morning, the president of the board was at Monette's front door, offering him the job.

"I loved the Stratford Festival," says Monette, recalling that long-ago moment. "I wanted it to be in good hands and I thought no one else would do it. I said yes, thinking it would be for three years at the most.'

Monette smiles. "There was a full moon shining the night I agreed to accept. I thought I was either mad or blessed."

He turned the place around instantly. Marti Maraden's production of Alice Through the Looking Glass brought the theatre into a nearly million-dollar surplus for the first year.

Since then, Monette's fiscal record has been unsurpassed. Every one of his seasons has resulted in a financial surplus and the Festival now has a $53 million endowment fund and a $5.5 million "stability fund," neither of which existed before his tenure. But to some critics, this success has cost the Festival some of its artistic soul, with the emphasis being placed on lucrative musicals and the middle-brow "family experience" shows like this season's To Kill A Mockingbird.

"I know I'm maligned in the press for this," concedes Monette, "but I had my priorities straight, I took care of the money, I took care of the audiences, I took care of the future."

Monette answers those detractors who say that Shakespeare has taken a back seat during his regime by pointing out that he produced the entire Shakespearean canon during his 14 years. His annual number of shows by the Bard equals or surpasses his predecessors.

But when it gets down to discussing how good or bad these shows actually were, Monette throws his hands in the air.

"Now we get down to a question of taste. You, or other critics, may not like what I've done, but I'm very proud of my work. Who is right? That's impossible to say."

Monette leans forward, speaking with sudden urgency.

"There's something you have to understand. Being the artistic director of Stratford is a public service job. You're responsible for the livelihood of this town. It's not just whether a play will do well or not. It's whether the people packing bags in the grocery store are going to be able to support their families.

"Critics don't understand this. You think you're just pronouncing judgement on a play. You're not. You're influencing the entire life of a community."

Looking across the table at this man who has held the most powerful job in Canadian showbiz for 14 years, he doesn't seem pushed by a need for personal financial gain. The normal issues of ego gratification appear to be a thing of the past.

Then what has driven him? And what keeps driving him, right until the end? The answer is a secret from his impoverished youth on the streets of Montreal.

"You can always remember sadness," he says with a grave wisdom. "As an actor, you can always access tears. The joy of life, that's harder to find, but the pain is there forever."

He pauses and looks across the table, deciding whether to tell this story. "I had a little rag doll called Pom-Pom," he begins, "and I loved that doll. I loved it so much.

"My mother decided that because I was going off to school, I had to be a man and cast aside these childish things. She threw Pom-Pom down the garbage chute, where I knew there was an incinerator at the bottom."

"I raced down the stairs, but of course, I was too late. Pom-Pom was gone into the flames. That was the day when I lost my innocence."

His eyes are filled with tears, unashamed. "In every show I have ever done since then, I have put a little rag doll. The audience may not know it's there, but I do."

Suddenly, Monette's whole career clicks into place: the sentimentality, the need for acceptance, the desire to be loved at all costs.

For 14 years – both for good and ill – the shadow of a little rag doll has hung over the Stratford Festival.

Now the curtain can finally fall on the past and a new day will begin.

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